SpiritMatters Monthly May 2010

This mystery of Love be sung,

In every age, by every tongue.

 

Every year at 5a.m. on May the 1^st a very unique tradition takes place in the University town of Oxford, England. That morning, known as May Morning, the choir from the chapel of Magdalen College (pronounced “Maudlin”) climbs to the top of its medieval bell tower and sings a hymn to the rising sun. This tradition dates back at least 500 years and is now the occasion for great revelry and festivities in the street below Magdalen College tower.

 

 Not many colleges or universities can point to traditions that are over 500 years old, but every school has traditions that it clings to with an almost religious zeal. So often the world thinks of young people as being anti-establishment or anti-tradition, but take a walk on any college campus and you are sure to find scores of young adults eagerly participating in traditions that range from the mundane to the bizarre. In New Haven, Connecticut there is a statue in the middle of Yale University’s old campus with a golden toe, polished by being constantly rubbed by students for good luck; at Dartmouth University the winter’s first snowfall each year is celebrated by a snowball fight on the college green; this year almost every college and high school commencement ceremony will begin with the familiar tune “Pomp and Circumstance.” When life is filled with change and turmoil, as the lives of many young adults are, it can be very reassuring to have something stable and dependable to hold on to. Perhaps it is for this reason that it is common to refer to our school as our “alma mater,” which is Latin for “nourishing mother.”

 

Our schools, like our mothers, should protect us, build us up, and give us the skills we need to survive in a tumultuous and changing world. We also refer to “mother church” for much the same reason: because it is there as a reliable source of love and encouragement when the rest of the world is more fickle with its affections. Our mothers’ are responsible for teaching us many of the traditions that we turn to for comfort later in life. Whether our traditions are taught to us by mother school, mother church, or our real mother, they are our connection to the past and our legacy to the future. The Church remembers three special mothers this month: Mary, Elizabeth and Monica. For catholics, the month of May is dedicated to the Virgin Mary (arguably the most famous mother of all) and the Feast of the Visitation recalls her visit to the home of her cousin Elizabeth, who was soon to become a mother herself. One wonders what traditions and what elements of character these two women transmitted to their sons. We often talk about the “fathers” of the Church, people like Saint Augustine of Hippo, who spilt ink and sometimes blood defending the faith, but the fact that Augustine was a Christian at all is directly the result of the persistence of his mother Monica. Receiving out faith at the hands of our mothers is not just a Christian phenomenon either: in the Jewish tradition, one is considered Jewish if they are born to a Jewish mother. Like our traditions, our mothers connect us to the past and give birth to our future; they are a reminder that we are not floating alone in some soulless cosmos, but are connected physically, emotionally and spiritually to the world around us. The Magdalen College choir sings an ancient song on May Morning, which gives thanks to the Holy Trinity for the gift of the Eucharist, which in Christian theology fills us with God’s life; may we too give thanks this May for the sources of life and love in our own lives.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly April 2010

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,

Bright with a glorious splendor,

For darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

I began last April’s column with a quote from T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” This year I am inspired again by Eliot, who writes in his poem “Little Gidding”:

 

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

 

Here we are at the beginning of April and the beginning of Spring, a time when we like to celebrate new life, the warmth of longer days and the beauty of new flowers that seem to be blooming everywhere, and yet, I can’t help but feel that this April may feel more like an end for some than a beginning. Some endings are welcome. I, for one, am ready for Lent to be over and I could do without the cold weather for a while, but some endings are much harder to bear. Whether it is the end of a career, a relationship, or a life, it can be incredibly difficult at times to remain optimistic and hopeful when something that has given our life great meaning is now coming to an end.

For most Christians, the first three days of April this year coincide with what is called the Sacred Triduum, or the three holy days: Maundy (or Holy) Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. For Christians these days are focused on the contemplation of the end: specifically the end of the life of Jesus of Nazareth: his last supper (Thursday), his execution (Friday), and the liminal time of mourning and waiting for what was coming next (Saturday). For the followers of Jesus, those three days represented not only the death of someone that they truly loved, but also the death of their hopes and dreams for what he would do in their own life. Looking back on the event 2000 years later, we can see that what was at first seen as the end of one life, was also the beginning of something far more powerful and greater.

 

The end is where we start from. The future can be such an unknown and scary thing sometimes; the past which may not have always been happy, is at least familiar to us. But life never allows us to remain forever the same: our careers change, our relationships change and our bodies change. The challenge of faith is to see in all these changes not just an end, but also a new beginning. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that: “All that I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all that I have not seen.” The Easter Vigil, which is a service that many Christians participate in on Saturday night, consists of many readings which retell stories of miracles and grace from the Judeo-Christian scriptures. It is easier to have faith in the future, if we can remind ourselves of how we have experienced God’s grace in the past.

In your own life, what sorrowful endings turned out to be blessed beginnings? When has an unwanted or unfortunate change brought about something truly wonderful? I can recall many times in my life when God has placed me where I needed to be, not exactly where I wanted to be. Each time the change may have been difficult, and even painful, but ultimately I can look back and see in every ending the beginning of something new.

The Easter Vigil service begins in total darkness, which is appropriate since after a dramatic change or loss in our lives we may feel lost or in the dark, just as those first followers of Jesus did, but it doesn’t end that way; it ends in total and glorious light, symbolic of the hope that our lives do not end in darkness, but rather, in the light of something new and wonderful. May you be blessed by the ability to see in every ending, the seeds of a new beginning.

 

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church,

And let your holy courts, in radiant light,

Resound with the praises of your people.

 

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly March 2010

I bind unto myself the power,

Of the great love of cherubim….

March 17^th is a day that lives in infamy for most Americans. It is a day that, regardless of their ethnic heritage, Americans revel in everything Irish: Irish food, Irish music, and in particular, Irish Beer. Our modern celebration of St. Paddy’s Day has about as much to do with Saint Patrick of Ireland as Valentine’s Day has to do with Saint Valentine. In Ireland, March 17^th is regarded as a holy day of obligation, wherein the faithful are expected to go to church to give thanks for this their country’s patron saint, but in America the celebration takes on a much more secular nature. What is amusing to me, is that Saint Patrick, whose feast day is now used for celebrating Irish cultural and national pride, was in fact (drumroll please)…BRITISH! The great irony of Saint Patrick’s Day, is that just as so many of the revelers in the streets on March 17^th haven’t got a drop of Irish blood in their veins, neither did the man in whose name they are celebrating.

Saint Patrick was born around the year 390 in Northern Britain and when he was in his early teens he was captured by a band of Irish slave-raiders, taken to Ireland and forced to serve the Irish as a slave for many years. Eventually Patrick escaped and returned to Britain, where he was later ordained as a priest and as a bishop, but freedom was not enough for Patrick. Patrick had a vision that compelled him to do something with his new found freedom. What did he do? He returned to Ireland, to the place where he had been enslaved and sought to minister to those very same people that had once held him captive.

Patrick’s story is one of the greatest examples of the power of forgiveness. Saint Patrick didn’t return to Ireland seeking revenge or restitution, he sought reconciliation and he got it. Kings flocked to Patrick; people followed him about all over the countryside; legends were formed and tales of miraculous deeds began to spread. What is unfortunate though is that while the little miracles brought Patrick fame, the biggest miracle in his life was largely overlooked. Patrick’s faith was the most important thing in his life; it was the greatest treasure he had, and he chose to offer that not to his friends or family or even to his own countrymen; he chose to offer it to his enemies, the same people that had once persecuted him. Patrick did one of the hardest things for any human to do: he forgave his enemies. Now that is truly a miracle.

Anyone well versed in modern Irish history knows just how much animosity there is between England and Ireland and this animosity exists for good reason. People always have good reasons to resent their enemies, otherwise they wouldn’t be enemies. Saint Patrick had many reasons to resent and hate his Irish overlords, but he found a force more powerful than reason: love. Love compels us to do the most unreasonable things sometimes, like forgiving those who have hurt us.

I for one intend to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, not because I have Irish ancestors, but because his life is a reminder that cultural and national pride should never come before our love for our fellow man. Remember that, like Patrick of Ireland, the person who has the most to teach you about who you are just might come from the enemy camp.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly February 2010

Dust thou art,

And unto dust shalt thou return.

A couple weeks ago I was walking through Union Square when I happened upon a young man putting the final touches upon a huge sand mandala that he had made on the sidewalk. Sand mandalas are a Tibetan Buddhist tradition whereby colored sand is used to create a large circle or wheel with extremely intricate designs within it. I have seen sand mandalas made several times. The first time was by a team of Buddhist monks that spent an entire week painstakingly placing sand grain by grain into the pattern. It is amazing to see just how careful the monks are with their work and sand mandalas are usually amazing works of art, but they are not merely art. This is a beautiful creation with an important lesson to teach. As soon as the sand mandala is finished it may be ritually blessed and then, much to the horror of many onlookers, it is swept away. Sand mandalas are meant to be an object of great beauty for only a moment and their destruction emphasizes the Buddhist belief in the transitory nature of the material world. The used sand is scooped up and poured into a nearby river never to be used again. Regardless of how beautiful or complicated this piece of art appears, its creator always reminds us that it is made from the same stuff we sweep off our floors everyday: sand. After looking at the young man’s mandala for a few moments, I went on about my business. By the time I had returned from getting a cup of coffee at a nearby café, the mandala was gone, with scarcely a trace that it had ever been there at all.
Of course, you don’t have to be a Buddhist to recognize that the material world is fleeting. Every year millions of Christians mark their foreheads with ashes as both a sign of penitence and as solemn reminder of their mortality. The ashes are all that remain of the palm branches from Palm Sunday the previous year. The palm branches, which to Christians are a reminder of Jesus of Nazareth’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, are completely burned until there is nothing left but carbon. This carbon is then pressed upon a person’s head with the memorable words: “remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It is a stark reminder that human life, no matter how complex or intricate it may be, can like that sand mandala be swept away in a moment.
The sand and the ashes are not just meant to remind us that life is short though: for the Tibetan Buddhist the sand designs are meant to portray eternal spiritual realities and the pouring of the sand into the water is meant to bring healing and blessing into this world, for the Christian the ashes are a sign of belief in an eternal world beyond this physical one and they are a reminder that what we do in this temporary world matters in that eternal one. Both the sand and the ashes are physical symbols of an important spiritual truth: life is about more than the stuff it is made out of. Beautiful things may fade away, or be swept away, but beauty never can. May we be able to appreciate the beautiful things in our life, but never lose sight of the true eternal beauty which lies behind them.

SpiritMatters Monthly January 2010

With the Lord one day is as a thousand years,
And a thousand years one day.

Dogs, for all of their amazing abilities, cannot tell time. A dog might know when it is time to eat, or when it is time to sleep, but it gets these cues from its environment, not from the clock on the wall. A dog might even know about when you will be getting home, but it can’t tell you how long you have been gone. This is why many dogs seem just as happy to see you after you have been gone one hour as after you have been gone for six. Clocks (and their hours, minutes and seconds) are simply not a meaningful part of a dog’s world.
Humans, on the other hand, worship clocks. Don’t believe me? Just turn on your TV every December 31st.

Of course, clocks aren’t the only time-telling devices that humans worship: we love calendars too. January marks the beginning of a new calendar year and thus for many of us, means it is time to buy a new calendar. I have three calendars on my desk at work, two at home, one in my computer and one in my phone. I have a hard time imagining what my life would be like if I didn’t have something in front of me telling me what day it is today, what I’m supposed to be doing, and what I’m likely to be doing tomorrow.

Calendars can be very useful devices; at their best they can help us remember and celebrate meaningful events. They can help us to manage our time and number our days so that those things that are the most important get the most attention. Calendars should help us live our lives, not just eat them away one day at a time. Long ago, before the average person even owned a calendar, priests would stand before their parishioners on January the 6th (the Feast of the Epiphany) and sing to them the dates of the major feasts of the following year. Here the average person was given the opportunity to look ahead at the coming year and at least mentally set apart those great observances wherein his or her time belonged to God and no other.

Now is the time, while our calendars are still fresh and uncluttered, to look ahead and take note of those things which we wish to observe in the coming year. Have we blocked off time to participate in our faith communities? Have we set aside time for rest and vacation? Have we
planned to do anything fun and exciting in the coming year? Take the time to do what is truly important, or the unimportant things will take the time away from you. Tell your calendar what is important in your life before it tells you.

We have all grown so dependent on clocks and calendars to order our daily lives that we often forget that they are a human creation, not a divine one. Clocks and calendars are our attempt to impose order on the universe, but they are likely to be far more important to us than they are to God; after all, time takes on a very different meaning if you aren’t sitting on a planet spinning around the Sun. Just because we have set aside time for God, doesn’t mean that God is bound to act according to our schedule. God doesn’t wear a watch. We set aside time to allow ourselves to see how God is continually working in our lives, not to force God’s hand. Setting aside time for God is a ritual practice that reminds us that we forget him more than he forgets us. God can and will enter into our lives even at the most inconvenient times. Sometimes it seems like God is always leaving everything to the last minute, but then when you are in control of the universe I guess there’s no need to be in a hurry. Dealing with a deity that can’t tell time can be frustrating, as the psalmist frequently reminds us (“How long, oh Lord”), but it can also give us great hope: hope that God, like a dog, will be filled with joy every time we return and not care so much about how long we have been away.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly December 2009

"Mark my footsteps, good my page. Tread thou in them boldlyThou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly."

There is a legend about a 10th century Duke of Bohemia (the modern day Czech Republic) that claims that the man was so pious and generous that even his footsteps provided warmth for those that followed him. This Duke, who was sainted after his death, is known to most English-speaking Christians as “Good King Wenceslas,” the hero in the popular Christmas carol of the same name:

Good King Wenceslas last looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even;

Brightly shone the moon that night, tho' the frost was cruel,

When a poor man came in sight, gath'ring winter fuel.

"Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know'st it, telling,

Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?"

"Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain;

Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither:

Thou and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither."

Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together;

Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter weather.

"Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger;

Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer."

"Mark my footsteps, good my page. Tread thou in them boldly

Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly.

"In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;

Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,

Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

The setting of this carol is not Christmas Day, but the day after Christmas, which is the Feast of Saint Stephen. Saint Stephen is regarded as the first martyr of the Christian Church and one of its first deacons. Stephen’s task was to serve the widows in the early church and make sure that they got the food that they needed. Stephen was falsely accused of blasphemy and stoned to death by religious leaders who envied his gifts of ministry. The Feast of Stephen has been celebrated on December 26th since the 4th century, or roughly from the time that the Church started celebrating Christmas on December 25th. Why have these two feasts been linked for so long? It is easy for us to get caught up in the story of the Nativity and miss the profound significance of the greater story that is being told. We often think of children dressed as shepherds doing church plays or of the joy and innocence of kids opening toys on Christmas morning, but lest we become too enchanted by the joy and revelry, the Feast of Stephen is right there to remind us that faith and religion are anything but child’s play. Sometimes showing love to others comes at a cost far greater than any credit card bill.

Stephen, like all deacons, dedicated his life to serving others. For Stephen, serving others was an act of love, but love always comes at great risk. The Nativity story is full of risk: Mary risked her own life for the love of God and for the love of her child; the Magi risked their lives by travelling to a foreign land to show their love to an unknown child; Joseph risked his and Mary’s life by fleeing to Egypt to save the life of their newborn. In the Hanukah story, the Maccabeans risked their lives for the love of God. Good King Wenceslas risked the cold to see that a poor man was warm and well fed. Risk is all around us this time of year. I think the publicity surrounding this flu season has made us all more aware of the great risk we take when we serve others. While we may (and should) do everything in our power to reduce our risk of getting sick or spreading disease to others, healthcare workers still take a risk every time they come to work to care for others that are suffering. This is nothing new. The Church has a long list of saints who risked (and sometimes lost) their lives for the sake of serving those in need. Whether or not we consciously think about it, every act of love is an act of risk taking, even (as the Christian story goes) for God.

Serving others may not always be comfortable and pleasant. It can at times (as the story of St. Stephen reminds us) have horrible consequences. It may mean holding the hands of those whom the world has abandoned. It may mean risking our own lives for the sake of the lives of others. It may mean literally or figuratively stepping out into the cold world to bring warmth to others. The beauty of many of our religious traditions are that they help us take that risk together. Like the young page following King Wenceslas, if we follow in the footsteps of the saints that have gone before us perhaps the world won’t be quite so cold.

We could, of course, try to play it safe. We could not take a chance on love; we could ignore the needs of others; we could just go our own way avoiding every risk, but what a bitterly cold world that would be indeed. Living in a world where our creator doesn’t risk loving us and where we don’t risk loving each other is, in my opinion, the only risk not worth taking.

Blessings,

Fr. Kevin

SpiritMatters Monthly November 2009

Poussez

The Montreal subway system came up with a clever solution for getting passengers in and out of their METRO stations in an efficient manner: rather than have the standard double doors in which people coming and going fend for themselves in opening their own doors, they created a very simple single door that pivots in the middle. If you push on the door to exit the station, you open the door for those entering. If you push on the door to enter the station, you also open the door for those exiting. I doubt that the designers of the METRO stations were trying to make a social statement, but they made one nonetheless: life doesn’t have to be about competition all the time. It is possible to get where you need to go without standing in the way of others.
Most of us were taught in school the principle of scarcity. What scarcity basically says is that we have unlimited needs and wants, but limited resources. In other words, we are taught that there is not enough to go around and therefore we must compete with each other just to get what we need. Much of human history seems to be about one group competing with another just to stay alive. There have been some moments of grace though when we have realized that life may not always have to be a case of “me or you.”

One of the great “American Stories” that I was taught growing up was that of how the Pilgrims left the religious persecution of the Old World and came to America to create a different type of society. One of the great pinnacle moments of that story is when the Pilgrims celebrated a great “Thanks-giving” feast after their Native American friends had helped them find and grow the food they needed to stay alive in this new land. The feast that the Pilgrims had with the Native Americans might have been seen as a hopeful sign that future relations between these two races would be characterized by charity and cooperation, but alas we know that was not the case. The old idea of scarcity crept back in and the Pilgrims soon found themselves competing with the Native Americans for the land, food, and resources that the abundant New World had to offer. Pretty soon the New World began to look just as bloody as the Old World. What happened? We turned survival from being about cooperation into being about competition.

The feast of Thanksgiving was a celebration of God’s abundance. When we realize that we have enough we have less inclination to take from others. Thanksgiving is a wonderful American tradition of taking a moment to remember how much we have, and how important that it is to share what we have with others. We are in danger of losing Thanksgiving though. Retailers have been in fierce competition with one another to see who can get the earliest jump on the holiday season. This year Christmas (or the retail version of it) invaded mid-October, perhaps September will be next. Retailers see Thanksgiving as a day to rest and energize for the shopping to follow the next day, not a day to recognize that we already have all we need.

I thank God for those moments of grace like that first Thanksgiving, when we realize that if we share what we have with those around us that we will get so much more in return than we would if we just tried to take what we want. Maybe we have enough. Maybe things are not as scarce as we are sometimes led to believe. Maybe life would be better if (like on the Montreal METRO) we worked together to push the doors out of the way, and not each other.